Gold Dust Woman
by BellaFlan
Summary: Shattered illusions of love. Belle thought Rumplestiltskin gave her his dagger, but power is a mistress he can't give up. Betrayal brings out the beast in Belle. Still, she can't send him over the town line. S4 AU.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N This is my first attempt at Rumbelle. I noticed most fics deconstruct Rumple, and I wanted to give Belle a voice. Gold Dust Woman is AU of S4, starting at the scene where Belle sends Rumple into exile. It's my intention to post in drabbles. Big love to Wordslinger for pre-reading.**

Blue sparks. I see so much blue that I nearly miss him, dark and angry, squeezing a beating heart in his hand, fingers like talons. A tree casts a shadow, sinewy branches, inside the clock tower and I can't stop looking at his hands; I'm transfixed by the way they clutch.

Dropping to my knees I crawl, vaguely aware of the elevator doors closing behind me, of Emma's voice, of Hook's strangled cries.

I can't stop to think. I can only move, crawl like a deranged quadruped. The rough wood scrapes my knees, and I crawl, crawl, crawl, silent and burning. My legs ache.

"Stop," I whisper but the words never leave my lips.

"Why can't I-" Rumple struggles with the heart, his hands tensing and releasing. "Why can't I crush it?"

I find my voice. "Because I commanded you not to."

For an instant, Rumple's eyes flash pure anger. Betrayal.

"Drop the heart." Somewhere from deep within, I command him. My voice doesn't break, and it should as the dagger quavers in my hand. "Drop the heart. Release everyone."

He exhales. Resignation curving his shoulders, I watch him wither before me.

"Now you can take us to the town line," I say, "because we need to be alone for what comes next."

* * *

"Belle...sweetheart?" His voice is a whisper, timid like water dripping from a faucet. He is just as relentless. "What are you doing?"

"No, Rumple." The dagger is still in my hand. He reaches toward me as if in supplication, but his eyes, reflecting silver, betray him. "I'm finally facing the truth."

How easily he could kill. Life means nothing to him; years of power have gnarled and perverted his heart. He is black coal.

"Your true love is your power." My back is straight but I'm crumbling. The illusion he'd created of love and security and happiness is purple smoke now, cloying.

"I- I like the power. I do. But I love _you_ ," he says, the lines around his eyes deepening as his forehead crinkles. "The power means that I can-that _we_ can have everything."

Those eyes. They kill me; I can't look at them. Desire, greed, love, he wears his emotions in his eyes. But mine live in my belly, roiling and churning acid, shooting bile into my throat. My heart burns. "I only wanted you," I say, choking a sob. "I wanted to be chosen. I tried to be everything for you, Rumple...but I lost my way."

The sharp end of the dagger cuts through the moonlight, refracting a beam onto Rumple's chest. For a terrible instant, I imagine lunging forward, cutting out his heart the way mine's been sliced open. I want his chest to feel just as hollow, his lungs to constrict with every breath.

All this pain can't be mine alone to bear.

"Rumplestiltskin, I command you…" The words catch. He follows my gaze to the town line and back to the dagger. "I command you to…"

"Please, Belle," he whispers. "I love you. Please?"

"No!" I wail.

"I do, Belle. I love you; I swear it." Sobs muffle his words, and he drops to his knees, the phantom injury he'd suffered so long ago seeming to afflict him as his right leg teeters and then rests at an odd angle. "I do, Belle. Please don't send me away. I can't lose you."

I want to tell him that he already has. "You're a coward," I say instead.

He nods. "I know...but Belle, I can't lose you. I won't."

"Ah, but I have the dagger. The real one. There's nothing you can do to me."

His dark eyes blaze. "I'd never hurt you, Belle. Never."

"It hurts. Just breathing burns, Rumple. You've hurt me more than any spell could ever do. I'm a snail under your foot. Why can't you see it?"

He exhales sharply. "Sweetheart, please. I'll do anything. Tell me what you need, and I'll do it."

I shake my head. "This pain...I can't, Rumple. I need it to stop."

Somehow I'm beside him on the road. I don't even remember falling down, but I've curled myself into a tight ball as if to protect my most vulnerable places. I drop the dagger and it clangs, the chime reverberating through the silence.

"Take it," I spit. "Take what you want most." I'd always wanted to be a hero, but Regina was right after all: love is weakness. Rumplestiltskin needs to be sent away, punished, and I can't do it. I'd never been able to slay the beast. I couldn't even stomach hurting an ogre during the war-the very beast that robbed me of my mother. "Take it. Take your power."

"Belle?" Very slowly he rises and wraps his hand around the sharp end of the proffered dagger. Limply, I clutch the handle until I feel a tug. Once it's firmly in his grasp, I roll onto my back.

"Your true love." I'm laughing. There's a sense of sweet relief, almost cathartic, to see him as he is: a monster.

He turns it over and over again in his hand, his eyes wide and maniacal but his body wilting. I expect him to secret it away into the inside pocket of his overcoat. He doesn't, though. He pushes his long hair out of his eyes then lowers his arm, still clutching the hateful steel.

"My heart is full of love, Belle. But not for this dagger. It controls me, and I can't trust myself with it." He bends beside me and places it back in my hand. "Help me."

I can almost feel the steel buzzing beneath my fingers.

"This is a trick," I say, closing my eyes. "I won't fall for it. Not again."

His hand brushes my damp cheek. Trembling, his fingers hot, he whispers, "tell me what you need?"

"Take us home, Rumple. I just want to go home."


	2. Chapter 2

A cyclone of purple smoke brings us back home, and I draw in a deep breath, tasting its familiar too-sweet essence on my tongue. Vertigo takes hold; I can't make the spinning stop.

When I was a girl, I used to suffer from ear infections, and an old trick my mother taught me to stave off dizziness was to focus on something stationary. Concentrating on the familiarity of our living room window, I exhale slowly. The sky though-it's so full of stars and they won't stop moving.

"Steady," Rumple says, and it sounds like an apology. His arms are tight around me-I'm enveloped by his scent, his magic, his very _being_. He's everywhere and it feels like I'm nowhere, nothing. His hair is a whisper against my cheek, his breath warms my chin, and even his overcoat is draped on my shoulders, the rich fabric a soft caress on the back of my neck.

"There's too many stars out tonight," I say for no reason I can think of, and my hands ache, digging suddenly into Rumple's sharp shoulders. He winces but does nothing to untangle me from his arms.

The room feels like an earthquake.

Gravity is too thick, oppressive. Taking in deep breaths I try to stop the shaking. Every part of me trembles.

He clears his throat. "The stars were drawn to the hat, I think...before the spell was broken I could sense the chaos in the galaxies."

"Right," I say, letting go of him. "I know all about that _hat_ , Rumple, how it captures magic. Now you're going to tell me why you needed Hook's heart. And no excuses or impassioned soliloquies about how you were doing it for us. Just the bare-bones truth."

Rumple tries to draw me over to the sofa to sit with him but I can't. I need to fill my lungs with the right amount of air. I need to have my wits about me, something I've never quite managed when he's standing so close.

"I've made so many mistakes, Belle. I won't defend my choices, but before I tell you everything, you need to know-to understand that the choices I make are not only for me. Everything I do is motivated by love."

"Your heart is full of love! That's what's so infuriating, Rumple. If you were a bad man, a true monster, I could almost understand, not forgive, but understand. But how does a person who knows how to love and sacrifice and be a hero...how does he do such nefarious things?"

He smiles then, and of all the faces he's mastered over the centuries, this is the grin that leaves me coldest. His face transforms into hard angles and his eyes black soot. Even his dimples somehow are swallowed by the apples of his cheeks. "I want it all, Belle. The power...the freedom. Finally, I had all the ingredients to cleve myself from this dagger; to be free. The sorcerer's hat was only the instrument, you see. In order to complete my spell I needed to harness the power of the fairies and to sacrifice a heart. Hook's heart."

I know I've made the wrong choice, then. I should've pushed him out of town, not just because of retribution, but to keep everyone safe. None of us is safe, least of all me. And all this pain, I don't know where to keep it.

"And how did I play into all of this?" I ask, doing my best to keep the hysteria I'm choking on out of my voice. Furtively, I scan the room for that damned dagger whose whereabouts seem to have evaded me.

"Simple, Belle. I wanted to show you the world, and I couldn't do that without power. Once I'm no longer tethered to the dagger, my power becomes my own. No more curse."

"And you thought, what, that I'd condone killing Hook, sacrificing the fairies so that you could have your freedom?"

He shakes his head. "I don't expect you to understand."

"But I do understand. That's the trouble, Rumple, I get it. I know you...what kind of man you are. I'd foolishly thought you'd changed but-"

"Belle."

"No!" I yell. "Let me speak. I thought you'd changed but you never have. And you know what? I think I knew that. Deep in my gut. In the corners of my mind; the places I'm afraid to look."

I sit beside him and allow him to pull me to him, my head resting against his shoulder. "You never changed, Rumple. But I have. I'm not the same girl who traded her life for her village all those years ago."

He angles his body as if to kiss me, but I lower my head to thwart his advance. His comfort is not what I'm seeking. Not yet.

"I understand. You are who you are, and I can't change that. You _won't_ change. Not even for me."

"Belle I-"

"It's not a condemnation. It's a truth that I need to live with. Because as much as I despise the monster that's taken root in you, I hate the darkness inside me more." I stand and face him. "Tell me what you did with the dagger, Rumple?"

His eyes flicker away from my gaze. "It's somewhere safe. Nothing to concern yourself with."

I shake my head. "But I _am_ concerned. I need to know where it is. I can't protect Storybrooke unless I can control you."

"I promise, Belle, you needn't worry. You have my heart." He cups his hands over his chest as if he's about to pluck it out and hand it to me.

"Yes, but it's not your heart that truly rules you, is it? It's the dagger. Give it to me and I'll stay. And don't think you can fool me because I still have the gauntlet to suss out any forgery you might try to pass off on me."

"So it's an ultimatum, then? You or the dagger?" He stands and steps toward me.

"Yes. Give me the dagger or lose me forever."

A puff of grey smoke envelopes my hand, growing dense and heavy, and as it settles, the dagger takes shape out of the murk. Its hilt sits firmly in palm, my fingers wrapping around it before it's fully materialized.

"It's yours," Rumple says.

It's mine. Then why am I so afraid?


End file.
